


Action Figure

by JaneDavitt



Series: Action Figure [1]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, M/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-14
Updated: 2012-07-14
Packaged: 2017-11-09 22:14:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/459044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaneDavitt/pseuds/JaneDavitt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If seducing Steve is a game, Steve doesn't want to play. Not when he's going to be the loser.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Action Figure

"Close your eyes and hold out your hands."

Steve's not doing it. The last time someone said that to him, he ended up with radioactive goop in unmentionable places, no eyebrows, and a ringing in his ears that took three hours to clear. "No."

Tony gives him a wounded look. "We're pals. Buddies. Bros. You want me to arrange some trust exercises? Because I will." He pursed his lips. "Okay, I won't, because they're bullshit. I mean, you don't have to fall backward into my arms to prove you trust me, I know you do. Deep down. Where it doesn't show. And right now, it isn't showing, so hold out your hands." His eyes widen appealingly. "Please?"

Steve frowns. "Why would falling into your arms prove anything? If you didn't catch me, it's not like I'd get hurt, even if we did it at the top of a tall building."

"You'd be surprised how hard it is to let go and fall for someone even if you don't think there's any risk."

Steve can feel the water getting deeper and colder, hear the fin slicing through a wave as a shark circles closer. _Focus on something safer,_ he tells himself. _Not you in Tony's arms._

"What are you hiding behind your back?"

Tony looks as if he's going to try asking for the eye-closing thing again, then visibly gives up, shrugging aside the minor defeat as if it never happened. With Tony's attention span, he's probably not faking it.

"Ta-dah!"

Steve takes the two plastic encased objects and stares at them. Figurines. Captain America and Iron Man, detailed, gaudy with color, the packaging eye-catching.

"Well? What do you think?"

He shrugs. "They're okay."

"That's it? That's all you've got?"

"It's not like they didn't do this kind of thing back in the forties, you know." He makes himself say it as if it was a long time ago, pressing on the bruise, scratching at the scab. "The Captain America shield was the top-selling toy one Christmas. Every boy wanted one."

"What about the girls?"

Steve sets the packages down on the nearest table and takes a seat facing the window. "Is this when I say girls played with dolls in my day and you lecture me about, uh, gender equality?"

"You say that like it's in a foreign language," Tony says, dragging out a chair and flopping down onto it. Steve gives him a minute before he's up and pacing. Tony's tired, he can see that, but the man doesn't stay still, ever. Steve wants to go into his bedroom one night and watch him sleep just to see Tony relaxed, unmoving, for once, but it's on the creepy side, so he feels guilty about even thinking it. Tony's probably just as restless asleep anyway, the kind of guy who tosses and turns, sprawling out, starfishing across the bed on his stomach, the covers kicked out of the way. If he walked in and saw Tony like that, bare ass pale, legs spread invitingly, he'd...no. No, he wouldn't.

He clears his throat. God, he wishes he could get drunk. He's gone from passing out after one beer to being incapable of getting even the smallest buzz. Doesn't seem fair. "Might as well be." He flicks at the miniature Iron Man package. "So do the proceeds still go to the war orphans?"

It's Tony's turn to clear his throat. "To the-- Uh, no." 

"Who, then?" Suspicion rising, Steve turns the packet over and reads the fine print. "Stark Industries make these? _You_?"

"Hey, if we're going to be the victims of crass commercial exploitation, let's do it to ourselves, huh? And let me tell you, Thor's hammer is the cutest thing that's ever going to get swallowed by the pet dog."

"How much are you making off them?" Steve demands, tearing into the packages over Tony's anguished yelps about collector's items, mint in box, limited edition...

"You've got to factor in production costs, distribution...impossible to say."

Steve raises his voice to parade ground level one. "JARVIS! Profit on these pieces of crap. How much?"

"They're not due in stores until next week, but the projected net for the first day is approaching 800,000 dollars, with estimated--"

"Never mind. It's a lot." He pokes his finger at Tony. "To charity. Every single penny."

"It's not like I was gonna blow it on wine, women, and song," Tony protests. "I was using it to finance the team. Do you have any idea what the running costs are with us? We eat a lot. We destroy a lot. We break million-dollar pieces of tech _a lot_."

"So the profit on these isn't going to make a difference to us. Drop in the ocean."

"Well..."

"It'll make a difference to the kids who need it. My time or yours, there's always someone who could use a helping hand."

Tony's weakening. Steve knows the signs. The thoughtful frown, the momentary pause as Tony changes direction. He nudges him with an appeal to Tony's self-interest. "It'd be great publicity."

"I guess. Oh, what the hell. JARVIS, make a note, send a memo, whatever."

"Yes, sir."

"And this _is_ your time, Steve. You belong here with me. The team. Us." Tony jumps up off his chair and yeah, here comes the pacing. "It's cool though? You like it? Hulk's one is outperforming both of us in the test groups, but I think you look pretty cute."

Cute? Steve shakes his head and places the two figurines side by side. "Why are you bigger than me?"

"What?"

"I'm taller than you. Why is my figurine smaller?"

"It's the suit," Tony says quickly. "It adds an inch or two. Or whatever the to-scale equivalent is."

"And it makes your butt look bigger," Steve adds, awarding himself a point for a modern reference and a gold star for the pained expression on Tony's face.

"That suit was designed to make my ass look even better than it does in real life, if it's even possible to improve on perfection." He slaps his ass, the sound curling like fingers around Steve's throat, making breathing an issue. "You could bounce a dime off this baby."

"I'd like to test that theory."

No. He did _not_ just say that. 

A coin, silver and spinning fast, lands on the table. 

"Try it with a quarter."

The coin is cool for a moment in his palm, but he's blushing so hotly his core temperature is approaching meltdown. When he looks at the coin, he expects to see a puddle, not a circle. "I was -- It was a joke--"

Tony bends over the table, arms folded, ass up, as casually nonchalant as if he's not offering his ass to be played with. "Go on. Test away, Cap. If it doesn't bounce, you can claim a forfeit. You choose. Anything but polishing your shield. I don't want sprain my wrist getting a shine on it."

He's done this to test his bed-making technique in Basic dozens of times, anticipating inspection. He can close his eyes and smell the boot polish and gun oil, the indefinable musk of twenty men crammed into a small space. 

The chair scrapes back and he's on his feet, his hand on the small of Tony's back holding him in place, his other hand rising.

The coin falls, a lazy turn and twist and flip, falls endlessly, then strikes the curve of Tony's ass, and soon after there's a muted clink as it hits the floor.

"Well?" Tony demands, twisting around without dislodging Steve's hand. "What did it do?"

"I don't know," Steve says. He'd been watching Tony's ass flex and mapping every contour. "I think it just fell -- I don't know, okay?"

He steps back, rubbing his hand against his blue jeans, trying to scrub away the heat from Tony's back that's soaked into every pore. 

Tony straightens, and he's standing close now. And yes, he's shorter, but not by much. Tony fills the space around him, steals Steve's air. "Hey, I know a good forfeit."

His hand cups Steve's face and a freeze ray couldn't do a better job than that light, warm touch.

"Leave me alone."

He's begging. He can hear his voice break, so every word is jagged glass in his throat. 

"Not going to do that."

"Tony, you really need to back off."

Tony raises his hands, smiling his dangerous smile, the dream-haunting one that promises delivery on everything Steve's every dreamed about and never had. "Backing off. See?" 

He steps forward, not back, and a complicated, confused, chaotic moment later, his mouth's on Steve's and they're kissing. It's like licking a frosty pole or a battery. Tingles and chills and a zing that shoots through Steve's body then mellows to a liquid heat.

Steve jerks his head to the side, his mouth worked pliant, slicked wet. "H-How is that backing off?"

"There's a spider on the wall behind me," Tony tells him. "Giant. Dozens of legs. Probably mutated and deadly. I'm backing away from it and you got in the way."

It's funny, but there's a familiar, satisfied gleam in Tony's eyes. Steve's seen that look aimed at super-villains just before the plug's pulled on their grand scheme to conquer the world (and why do none of them realize that's the easy part and it's ruling it that's the life-destroying pain in the ass job of all time?).

"Done talking?" Tony murmurs. "Want to get back to what we were doing, maybe somewhere with a bed?"

"I said, back off!"

When he pushes Tony away, he forgets that without the suit Tony's human. Fragile. Tony _flies_ , landing awkwardly, the swaggering grace that makes Steve's gaze go to him every time they're in a room together lost for a moment.

"Tony!" Steve starts forward, a hand outstretched, but Tony's already rising, his hand rubbing his ass, his expression rueful, a little hurt. "I'm sorry. Really."

"I feel your pain." Tony winces. "No, wait, that's _my_ pain. No, make that agony." His eyebrows lift. "Mind filling me in on what I did wrong?"

"You're playing me," Steve says flatly, contrition forgotten. He points at the Captain America figurine. "That's a toy. I'm not."

"Steve, I would never--"

"You want me? Ask. Don't push me around a board until you think you've got me checkmated with no way out."

"You think that's what I just did?"

"You've been nudging me into position for weeks." Tony walking by half-naked, always with a reason to stop and chat. Tony cramming an innuendo into every other sentence, like a prize in a Cracker Jack box. Tony always with a reason to touch him, stand close, save his life--

Okay, maybe the life saving's incidental, not part of the seduction of Captain America, but hell, knowing Tony, maybe not.

"You make it sound so--"

The door opens and Thor walks in, Clint beside him. They're arguing about something, but their words slip by Steve, as impossible to catch as one of Clint's arrows. 

"We're not done," Tony tells him under his breath.

Steve shoves past him, heading for the door. "We never started."

His mouth remembers the feel of Tony's lips, so he knows he's lying, but he can't do this. Can't be one of Tony's conquests when he knows that after that submission, there's nothing Tony will want from him. 

Tony doesn't kiss and tell because Tony doesn't remember their names.

When he gets to the door, he glances back. Tony's at the table, the figurines in his hand, tapping their heads together, his expression unreadable.

Making them butt heads. Or kiss.

From here, he can't tell the difference.


End file.
